ed. - David and Lynn Frizzell have been TAAS members for many years, and offer these thoughts of their recent experience at Oak Flat.
These notes are for my friends and acquaintances, both those who have no experience with amateur astronomy and those who are veterans of many star parties. I am going to put some end notes on this to explain some terms, but you don’t have to read them to appreciate the fun stuff.
On May 8, 2004, I attended a star party with my new telescope. I had been to many star parties before, including many sponsored by The Albuquerque Astronomical Society (“TAAS”), of which I am a proud member. I had even taken a lender telescope from TAAS to one of these parties in Placitas, two years ago. The lender scope was an 8" Newtonian* on an equatorial mount*, but I was not very competent with it and on that evening I did not bring in a lot of good targets. As a result of the experience I just had in May, I now know that I had missed much useful experience that evening in Placitas, about showing things to the public.
TAAS puts on star parties throughout the spring, summer, and fall, mostly at the Oak Flat Campground Southeast of Tijeras, in the Carson National Forest. We assemble in a small semi-circular clearing near some covered picnic tables and campground bathrooms. The site is pretty good because we are able, after driving just a few miles, to escape most of the worst light pollution from Albuquerque; you can still see a glow over the top of the trees to the West. The advantage to the site, of course, is that it does have some “comfort” facilities and the public can usually get there without too much difficulty.
If you don’t already know, star parties are open to the public and are free. Children are especially welcome. We usually try to start the evening with a brief introductory slide show presentation and discussion about what might be in the evening sky that month. Then, the amateurs start pointing their telescopes at available targets and our “customers,” the public who have come, start to go from scope to scope, looking and asking questions. The number of telescopes that may be there will vary, but there are usually at least ten and sometimes as many as twenty-five. (If you ever go a large, state-wide star party, such as the Texas Star Party, there are literally hundreds of scopes!)
This Saturday, May 8th, did not start out auspiciously. There were clouds skudding around all day and in the early evening, they obscured a big piece of the sky directly over Albuquerque. The weather station was predicting the same partial cloudiness for the evening.
I was not optimistic as I loaded my telescope and equipment into my four door sedan. And loading is the correct word for it. I have a new Meade 12" LX200-GPS* and the scope alone takes up the back seat. Then I have to put in the tripod, a couple of big plastic boxes containing various accessories and lenses, and suddenly there is not much room left for a thermos of coffee, an ice chest for food and drink, and some additional warm clothes. To literally “top it off,” I had to put my “lifting rig” onto to the top of the car; more about that in a few moments.
When I arrived at the site, around five-thirty p.m., there were already about eight vehicles with telescopes set up. I realized that mine was the only sedan in that group and I think mine was still the only sedan by the time 18 telescopes were set up. All the other amateurs drove vans and pickup trucks. And if the sedan did not draw some side-ways looks, then my lifting rig drew quite a few amused glances.
The 12" LX200 is about seventy-five pounds, before you add a view finder or reflex sight. When I first got the telescope, at Christmas last year, I lifted it up onto its tripod and my back hurt for days. I decided I needed a better way to handle it “single-handed.” So I built a twelve-feet high tripod of 2x4 lumber and rigged a pulley system to the head of the tripod. (Actually, it’s a “boom vang” for you sailors.) I put together a sort of sling to hook to the handles of the fork mount and I have been able to mount and unmount the telescope pretty well with that arrangement. (Part of my sling system slipped that Saturday night, so I learned from that experience and made a modification that has stabilized the mounting process.)
Well, when my twelve-feet high wooden tripod went up and the pulley and sling were put on, I did get some comments - and several offers of help. The help would have been welcome but I did feel the need to become more skillful with this apparatus, so I declined the help. (Later, when I was taking the scope down in the early hours of the morning, I did accept help.)
Most amateurs bring Dobsonian-mounted* Newtonian reflectors to star parties. They are a lot lighter, when measured against their aperture*, then equatorial or fork-mounted scopes. Therefore, most amateurs can comfortably set up their scopes single-handedly.
I got my telescope mounted and had the finder scope* and reflex sight* on as the sky began to darken. The last of the amateurs had arrived by this time and even though there were still at least thirty minutes before we could begin to view anything, we started to get some “customers.” Also, there were still some clouds overhead. I explained to a few passers-by that it wasn’t quite dark enough yet.
I put my laser pointer* on my scope. I used the tops of some pine trees on the opposite side of the clearing to start to align the laser pointer, the reflex sight, and the finder scope. TAAS members were talking and starting to get out their lenses and star charts. At about 7:15 p.m., I felt a subtle level of excitement as I watched the clouds starting to clear away. Venus began to shine, still fairly high in the West. In moments she was stunningly bright. A few of our public guests were asking questions about the scopes and about the sky. A couple of the guests asked some pretty detailed questions about the intricacies of the various pieces of equipment, obviously knowing something about astronomy and astronomical equipment.
At about 7:30 p.m., the sky was darkening enough that we could see a couple of the spring sky’s brighter objects. Jupiter was almost directly overhead. Then we could see Saturn in the West. I began to make out Pollux, in Gemini. The amateurs started taking off their scope covers. There were soft conversations taking place all over the field. Some of those with the Dobs mounts started swiveling around to look up at Jupiter. The “customers” started to line up next to those scopes.
When I was finally able to see a couple of bright stars in the Eastern sky, I knew I would be able to get a good alignment. The first recognizable star that direction was Arcturus, in Bootes. At about 7:45 p.m. I turned on the power to my telescope. It can be run with a power converter, supplied by the manufacturer; with C-cell batteries; or with various other types of accessory power supplies. I tried the C-cell batteries this evening. They worked great.
Now, the “new” GPS system that has been part of the LX200s for about two years, takes longer to get started than the older “classic” LX200s, because it has several self-sensing features. It finds “level.” It takes a GPS fix. While it is doing this, it displays some information for you in the “hand box,” a sort of multiple purpose remote control that has a narrow screen across the top. Keep in mind that the last time I had operated the scope, in late April, I was in my back yard, in Albuquerque. On the evening of May 8th, the screen on the handbox showed that the telescope had taken a GPS fix and then it asked: is this “Moriarty?” Well, I couldn’t find “Tijeras” as an option on the screen, so I pushed the button for “yes.” That was not too far off, I figured.
Then the scope “slewed” to within about five degrees of Arcturus and asked me to “center” Arcturus in the field of view. For this I used a nine-millimeter lens* with an illuminated reticle*. By this time, I was pretty adept at using the remote control buttons to move the telescope the way I wanted it to move; it had taken me three nights of experience with the controls to get this to work the way I wanted it to. Now, while Arcturus was reasonably prominent by this time, the rest of Bootes was still not altogether clear.
After I clicked the “enter” key for having centered Arcturus, the scope slewed around to the West and asked me to center Procyon, in Canis Minor. Again, Procyon was bright, but its one companion star (there aren’t but two in this small constellation) was not yet visible. Procyon was in the field of view of the 35 millimeter lens, but near the outer edge. Again, I used the reticle eyepiece. And, just as advertised, after I centered and pressed “enter,” the two-star alignment was finished and everything worked smoothly and wonderfully.
While I was going through my alignment steps, the amateurs with the Dobs-mounted scopes were already showing guests Jupiter and Saturn. Even as I was explaining that my alignment was not finished, a few people were lining up to look. No one got impatient. They were genuinely interested to see what I would be able to do with this mechanical and electronic wonder.
If you haven’t enjoyed the pleasures of a modern “go to” telescope, let me assure you that it is great fun. The LX200 has a huge database of over hundred thousand objects and you can actually download more. The objects are divided up into categories, such as solar system, stars, and Messier Objects. When you ask the scope to “go to” an object, it actually tells you something about the object, such as its declination and sidereal time, its common name and its formal name. While you read this, the scope slews to the object and stops with the target in the middle of the field of view. And then it tracks the object for as long as it is the sky.
At 8:00 p.m., with the scope aligned, the sky almost dark, and my first ever line of guests already waiting to look through my telescope, I entered “Jupiter.” Jupiter is a wonderful sight in almost any sized instrument. That night, with 12 inches of aperture and a nearly clear sky at the zenith, I was able to show people the huge disc, four bright and distinct bands running across what I will call its latitude, and three moons. The bands alternated between a dark salmon and a light rose. The moons were yellow-white dots. (I could not make out the great spot that night.)
You experienced amateurs know what happened next. People stepped up to the lens - I almost exclusively used a wide-angled, 35 millimeter* lens that night - looked in, and they expressed various shades of wonder, awe, and delight. There were simple “Wows!” There were soft and loud exclamations. There were comments, such as, “I can’t believe I can see the moons!” There were rhetorical questions, such as “Is that real?” And nearly everyone, every time, said, “Thank you.”
Here is a poorly-kept secret. Amateur astronomers at star parties get to double their pleasure. Most amateurs that I know truly enjoy looking directly at astronomical objects. We take those sights as intrinsically pleasing for their beauty, and that beauty does not require a great understanding of the natural science behind it. Our viewing pleasure is enhanced, though, by some knowledge of the natural science behind the object - by a knowledge of the objects’ characteristics, size, distance, and so forth.
At a star party, we get to show people these beautiful and awesome sights. It is the same as if you were showing someone, say, the Grand Canyon, or a beautiful work of art, or if you were pointing out some luscious landscape or body of water. An amateur astronomer gets to lead complete strangers to the gallery door, so to speak, or to the rim of the Canyon, and say, “look.”
So it was on May 8th. I would pick up a target and enjoy seeing it for itself. And then I would get to show it to a host of other people. This is addictive stuff.
Many people ask questions as well as express their delight: “How big is it?” or “How far away is that?” and so forth. I had many of those answers at my fingertips. I also had taken along quite an assortment of books. One thing I learned this night was a pretty good idea of what was really necessary reference material for a star party and what could be left at home.
For most of the evening I would keep an object in the field of view until everyone in the “line” said that they had already seen it. I should point out that the word “line” does not accurately describe what people do around a telescope at a star party. While there were often lines, there were times when people would sort of bunch around me and then, by some means that wasn’t clear, they would decide who was going to go next. Sometimes one or two people would stay with me for three or four targets in a row; other people would go from scope to scope and then repeat the same order again; and some came once and I didn’t see them again. (There’s probably material for a thesis in sociology here.)
For some objects, I would persuade the guest to linger. “Let your eye take it in for awhile.” I would encourage people to stare slightly away from the object, especially for the galaxies or star clusters. (This is called “averted vision.*”) I would suggest to them what they might be seeing and how, with some time at the lens, they might begin to see more detail. I would suggest that they might see a “fuzzy blob,” for example. The blob might start to resolve into something circular and, if they were really patient, they might see something like a pinwheel shape. “There is a dark line” across the wide part of “the white ellipse.” Sometimes people would see more details; sometimes they just couldn’t see any details at all. It was interesting that I had to persuade people to take more time; they felt as if they were permitted only a few seconds before it was someone else’s “turn.”
I told them not be frustrated because there is a certain amount of experience that helps in seeing some of the details and that my 12" telescope doesn’t pick up as much detail as, say, one of the 16" or 25" Dobs’. Some of the children could get some details that the adults couldn’t see. Some of the smaller children could not see anything at all, because I couldn’t figure out how to help them get something in their “focus.”
I had made up a list of things to look at but I never pulled it out of my car. Part of my decision-making about what to point to was based on what was obvious in the sky and part was based on what the other amateurs were pointing to and talking about. Barry Spletzer had set his Dobs-mounted scope next to mine and I often just asked Barry what he was looking at; he was as patient with me as he was with the guests.
One the sights that came out well in my telescope was the globular cluster in Hercules, M13. At a simple, unchanged focus, it is quite a beautiful sight. When you explain to people that it is about 21,000 light years away, contains about one million “old” stars, and is in the “halo” around the Milky Way, you get true wonder.
Now, I did not show the star party public guests this next part, because of the logistics of teaching strangers how to manipulate the handbox. But for the rest of you, my friends and acquaintances, the motorized microfocuser on the LX200 gives you a new perspective and appreciation for M13. As many amateurs know, for most deep sky objects there is really only one fine focus point. If you focus only a little “before or after” the correct focal point there is nothing, or very little, left to see. I had known that M13 was an exception, but it was difficult to make out that exception with a standard rack and pinion eye piece focuser.
With the motorized microfocuser, which comes a standard equipment on the LX200-GPS, you can literally spend minutes making tiny changes in the focus and watch the image of M13 go through marvelous changes. If you haven’t spent the time doing that with a microfocuser, I definitely recommend it.
Although they were not “brilliant” in my 12" scope, I showed our guests the dark dust lane of the Sombrero galaxy (M104) and the pinwheel of the Whirlpool galaxy and its little companion (M51). For most guests, those items came through with some definition. On May 8th I could not get the center star of the Ring Nebula (M57), even though I have been able to see it in 8" Newtonians. The spiral galaxy (M81) and the irregular elliptical galaxy (M82) in Ursa Major were also pretty “dull” in my scope this night.
Vega, Antares, and Alberio were beautiful and bright. Vega was so bright that after the first two or three viewers said “Ouch;” I put on a polarizing filter. I didn’t think the colors of the Alberio double were as well separated as I have seen it on other nights.
And there was Saturn, one of my all time favorite views. It wasn’t available to us all of the evening, of course, as it set fairly early after it started to get dark. After all these years, I do know it is “real.” But it is wonderful how many of our guests said that they didn’t “believe” what they are looking at. Or another of my favorite comments was, “It looks just like the pictures!”
People come to star parties in all sizes and conditions of health. Most adults could easily bend the small amount necessary to look into the diagonal eye piece at most foci. Most children could do fine after I shifted the diagonal to the side. Then I had to lift a few, very small children up to the eye piece. I realized that I would be well advised to bring a small step ladder - two steps should be sufficient - for the smallest children. And for some of the adults with arthritic backs, I should either try that same step ladder or some type of adjustable stool on which they can sit.
The families with small children had pretty well given up by 10:00 p.m. The last of the public guests left by around midnight, as the moon was starting to give off a glare in the East. Clouds started to roll in. Some of the amateurs started putting their scopes away. With just amateurs left in the field, we looked through each other’s instruments and talked “shop.” I looked through Gordon’s binocular viewers and wished he hadn’t shown them to me - what a wonderful view that is!
When the moon was fully over the trees at about 1:30 a.m., and there were spotty clouds, we all gave up. We helped each other with our more cumbersome units. I packed up and headed home. I was a little tired but exhilarated by the evening’s experiences.
Don’t you wish you had been there?